Introduction: Background into foreground -- 1. Openness: Openness versus illiberalism -- Dissenting disabilities and the novel -- 2. All sorts and conditions: Variety of dissent -- Variety of dissenting views on the novel -- Variety of dissent and the novel -- 3. Places and politics: Regionalism of dissent -- Dissent and the city -- Radicalism and dissent -- 4. Presence of dissent -- 5. Brontës -- 6. Mrs. Gaskell -- 7. George Eliot: Introductory -- Adam Bede -- Felix Holt -- 8. Charles Dickens: What Dickens knew -- Stereotypes -- Dickens and the anti-dissenting tradition -- Dickens tradition -- 9. Mrs. Oliphant and the tradition -- 10. Was there a revolution in Tanner's Lane? -- 11. Sense of an ending -- Appendix: Charlotte Brontë's Ms. 'Julia'.
